Militias and conspiracy culture

Conspiracy culture
Many of the antigovernment ideas of the extreme right can also be found in the conspiracy culture that has developed since the late 1980s and which has exploded online since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The extreme right is a main source of material for the conspiracists, although it also borrows from Christian apocalyptics and the UFO subculture, as seen in the development of Milton William Cooper from UFO theorist to full-blown “patriot” agitator. Conspiracy culture has evolved into a large media subculture that includes websites, books, radio shows and – not least – online TV and video broadcasted through YouTube.

In particular, conspiracy culture has adopted the extreme right’s scepticism towards the government and the belief that it has been taken over by sinister forces that use the government to further their own goals, typically a global dictatorship called the “New World Order”, often shortened NWO. The term NWO seems to be borrowed from Christian apocalypticism, which also infuses it with a sense of impending doom – indeed, the idea of a coming one-world dictatorship can be seen as a secularized form of Christian prophesies concerning the coming of the Antichrist before the Final Judgment. The role given to the United Nations and other international organizations by some conspiracy theorists and militia members also seems to be connected to the preeminent role of the UN in modern end-time speculation. The idea of a shadow government seems partly inspired by UFO culture, in which the shadow force is seen as having been set up to regulate contact between the official government and extraterrestrials, but has since got out of hand. The Illuminati order, which is sometimes said to control the move towards NWO, seems to be borrowed from publications of the John Birch Society, while the anti-Semitism that characterizes some strains of conspiracy culture is derived from older writings like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as the writings of William Potter Gale, Willis Carto and others.

A typical mark of conspiracy culture is a willingness to blame the government or banking elite of almost anything, including the orchestration of incidents like the Oklahoma City bombings, the 9/11 attacks and the Newtown shootings, in order to further their own goals. Radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose site is a hotbed of militia- and gun-related discussion, has blamed both Newtown and the Boston bombings on the Obama administration, describing them as pretexts to confiscate the weapons of American patriots.

While conspiracy culture has its roots in the political right, it has for years found its way over into parts of the left, where anti-Semitic ideas are repackaged as opposition to “Zionism” and “the Israel lobby”, and into New Age culture, creating a fusion culture described as “conspirituality” as represented by the Zeitgeist movies and the writings of David Icke.

The role of racism
The role played by racism in today’s anti-government culture is debatable. Some point to the presence of African-Americans in the sovereign citizens movement to prove that it has largely distanced itself from its racist past.

Others point to the fact that the militia resurgence has occurred under an African-American president, and should at least partially be seen as a response to changing demographics and rising non-white immigration, giving it a racist undertone similar to that of the 1990s, and possibly greater. The same racist undertone can be observed in the nativist sentiment that animates anti-immigrant border militias as well as fears that Barack Obama is not US-born and therefore not eligible for the presidency. And finally, as already stated, strong anti-Semitic undercurrents are present in both conspiracy culture and the hatred of “international bankers” so common among sovereign citizens, who tend to identify the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve with the Rothschilds and other Jewish financiers.

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